Still More Two-Part Episode Hits and Misses

I haven’t done one of these for a while, so let’s take another look at a grab bag of Comfort TV-era two-part episodes and separate the hits from the misses.

As I previously wrote, two-parters should be utilized only for major series milestones or when a writer comes up with an idea that is so good, it deserves a little extra breathing room to be fully explored.

But that doesn’t always happen.

Since we all have more time at home these days, it seems like an ideal opportunity to find some great shows that will help kill an evening – as well as some to avoid.

Good: That Girl: “It’s a Mod, Mod, Mod, Mod World”

Ann meets the famed British fashion photographer Noel Prince, who brings her to Los Angeles as part of a pictorial on the mod, modern woman. Of course he falls for her, much to Donald’s jealous dismay:

Noel: “I once knew a soccer player named Hollinger.”

Donald: “I once knew a dog named Prince.”

The photo shoot scenes are just the sort Mike Myers sent up as Austin Powers, but

Gary Marshal is really good in this as Noel Prince.

It's a shame he had such a short career – his last IMDB credit was in 1971. And while the ‘60s vibe is fun, I was surprised the first time I saw the opening scene, which took place in an automat. I hadn’t seen one of those on TV outside of Agent Carter, which was set in the 1940s. I didn’t know they still had them in New York 20 years later.

Bad: Bewitched: “George Washington Zapped Here”

This was a lightly rewritten version of an earlier (and much better) Bewitched two-parter, in which Aunt Clara zaps up Benjamin Franklin. Here we get George Washington (convincingly played by Will Geer) instead of Franklin, and the drippy Esmerelda instead of Aunt Clara. It’s still sad to me that such a great series ended with a such a dreadful final season.

Good: Dynasty: “Royal Wedding”/ “The Aftermath”

Better known among fans as the Moldavian Massacre, the first half of this two-parter ended with a scene that apparently wiped out the show’s entire cast. 

Measured by ratings and water-cooler buzz, this was a cliffhanger to rival J.R. getting shot and Picard becoming Locutus. Of course, when the next season began we found that the terrorists who sprayed that hail of bullets were about as good at hitting their targets as the bad guys on The A-Team.

Bad: Dallas: “Return to Camelot”

Dallas opened its tenth season by explaining how Bobby Ewing could appear in Pam’s shower after being killed at the end of season eight. Say it with me: Bobby’s not dead – it was all a dream! 

“I thought they had written themselves into a corner,” Charlene Tilton told me when I interviewed her on the occasion of the series’ 25^th anniversary. “Everyone criticized the shower scene, but I never heard anyone come up with a better idea.” She’s got a point.

“Return to Camelot” felt entitled to the special status of a two-parter, but that was hard to maintain with its undercurrent of “nothing to see here, move along,” so no one would linger over such an audacious reboot.

Good: Harry O: “Forty Reasons to Kill”

In addition to featuring two actresses I’m always happy to watch in anything, Joanna Pettet and Hillary Thompson, this is one of those stories that definitely merits the added time.

You’ve seen variations on this plot before: Harry’s case takes him to a small rural town run by corrupt power brokers that have the local law enforcement under their thumb. Of course, hard-luck Harry is going to run afoul of those folks and will take a few beatings and spend some time in jail before he finds what he needs to bring them down.

Bad: Family: “Taking Chances”

I don’t know if there really are any bad episodes of Family. At least until Quinn Cummings shows up. But this show is on such a high pedestal with me that I’m disappointed when it indulges in a drama trope that’s right out of a soap opera. In “Taking Chances,” family patriarch Doug (James Broderick, excellent as always) is hit by a car and loses his sight. It might be restored with surgery, but the operation is risky and could also kill him.

The performances are always perfect, so I can’t not like this show. But the whole conceit of a tragic life-changing event that is conveniently erased in the last scene feels beneath the standards of this Emmy-winning series.

Good: The Bionic Woman: “Jaime’s Shield”

You know how a good whodunit is set up so that the last person you’d suspect is the guilty party? “Jaime’s Shield” got me with its reveal. And all the other business along the way is fun as well, with Jaime going to the police academy and hiding her special abilities from an obnoxious instructor – until that moment she decides to put him in his place. 

Bad: The Wild Wild West: “The Night of the Winged Terror”

This was a barely serviceable single show that got stretched into a mess. Hypnotism stories rarely work for me, except for that Dick Van Dyke Show episode in which Rob acts drunk every time a bell rings.

This one further suffers from the absence of Ross Martin as Artemus Gordon, who was sidelined with health issues for several shows in the series’ final season. Only the genuninely hypnotic close-ups of the divine Michele Carey made this tolerable. 

Good: The Secrets of Isis: “Now You See It…And Now You Don’t”

Every so often I have to throw a bouquet at my favorite Saturday morning series, so I hope you’ll indulge me.

These were the show’s final two episodes, and they were used in an attempt to launch a spinoff series called “The Super-Sleuths.” After teacher Rick Mason is arrested for stealing government secrets, four of his friends and students set out to prove his innocence: series regular Rennie Carol (Ronalda Douglas), Asian kung-fu expert C.J. (Evan Kim), street-smart Feather (Craig Wasson!) and an magician of Indian descent named (and billed as) Ranji. 

Throw in a guest spot from Captain Marvel (John Davey) and some wonderful scenes set in the dearly-missed Busch Gardens theme park, and you’ve got a great way to send off a beloved series.

Bad: The Facts of Life: “Out of Peekskill”

It’s hard to find anything to celebrate about a story that removes a beloved character from a series canvas, and replaces that character with one that never really clicked. Sure, this show had already passed its sell-by date at the start of its eighth season. But it was still sad to lose Charlotte Rae and the familial connection she had to the kids in her care. 

Cloris Leachman’s ditzy den mother didn’t get a great introduction, and it was the beginning of the end for Facts of Life.

The Comfort TV Career of Meredith Baxter

 

The Internet Movie Database lists more than 100 credits for Meredith Baxter; 90 of them are for television. Her career began in an era when TV stars rarely crossed into film, but even after such transitions became commonplace she apparently had no such aspirations.  Next month, she joins the cast of The Young and the Restless.

I decided to write about her because I don’t think enough people do. 

Some TV actors are taken for granted, perhaps because consistent proficiency in a wide range of projects is not as esteemed as a single transcendent character or performance. Meredith Baxter starred in one of television’s best dramas and one of its best-loved situation comedies, appeared as a regular or recurring character in three other shows, earned four Emmy nominations and headlined enough TV movies for a Lifetime network marathon that would last a week.

Whatever she was in, she made it better, and that’s something you can’t say about a lot of performers with higher-profile careers. That’s why I’ve channeled my inner Ralph Edwards to celebrate her television achievements – This is Your Comfort TV Life, Meredith Baxter.

Her first year with professional credits – 1971 – includes a memorable appearance on The Partridge Family, in the season 2 episode “Where Do Mermaids Go?” In one of her rare screen performances as a brunette, Baxter plays a bohemian heiress, whom the Partridges first meet when she is skinny-dipping in a rural pond (talk about making an entrance!). In return for the family’s kindness, she deposits one million dollars in their bank account. 

Hippie characters in this era of television were usually played somewhat broadly, with a lot of now-archaic slang. Baxter brings a grounded, melancholy, mature-beyond-her-years quality to an often-clichéd role. And in her close-ups, you may be entranced as I was by the most stunning blue eyes of anyone on TV, with the possible exception of Lara Parker from Dark Shadows.

Just one year later she was headlining her own series, one created by Partridge Family creator Bernard Slade. Baxter played Bridget Teresa Mary Colleen Fitzgerald, an Irish Catholic school teacher who falls in love at first sight with cab driver Bernie Steinberg. “I think we have a problem,” they realize, and that was the introduction to Bridget Loves Bernie (1972-1973).

The couple’s inter-religious marriage and the culture clash of their respective in-laws was the launching point for many of the episodes, but the topics were not explored with the frankness and harder edge of All in the Family, which debuted the previous year. Instead, Bridget Loves Bernie was a sweet and gentle sitcom that worked because of the chemistry between Baxter and costar David Birney, whom she married (and later divorced).    

Despite being ranked fifth in the ratings among all shows that season, CBS shut it down out of concern over adverse reactions from a vocal minority of intolerant viewers. More than 40 years later it’s still the highest-rated TV series to be canceled. Not one of television’s prouder moments.

Following guest appearances on Barnaby Jones, Medical Center and Police Woman, as well as leads in several TV movies (one of the best being The Night That Panicked America, a dramatization of Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds), Baxter played Meg in a miniseries adaptation of Little Women, featuring Greer Garson, Dorothy McGuire and a cast rich in classic TV stars, from Susan Dey and Eve Plumb to William Shatner and Robert Young.

But it was her next series, Family (1976-1980), that for me still resonates most amidst her remarkable resume. Meredith Baxter joined the show in season 2, taking over the role of Nancy Maitland from Elayne Heilveil. 

Family is one of the best shows of the ‘70s and its not accessible anywhere now, outside of a discontinued DVD release of the first two seasons. Maybe we’ve lost the capacity to appreciate shows like this. After 20 years of sensationalized reality TV, the idea of dramatizing the normal low-key reality of life with one Pasadena family now seems like an incomplete pitch; what’s the hook? Is the father psychic or is the mother leading a double life? Does the son have super powers? Is the daughter a Muslim or a pop singer or something else that will bring in a broader demographic?

When the writing and the acting are as perfect as they are here, no other incentive should be necessary. To watch Family is to be wholly drawn into the joys and sorrows and relationships of fictional characters, and to believe that every word they say is extemporaneous, and could not possibly have been typed by someone else months earlier.

And to think we’ve come this far without even mentioning Family Ties (1982-1989), the show for which the actress is certainly best-known. Baxter was top-billed but quickly ceded the spotlight to Michael J. Fox, who Arthur Fonzarelli-ed the rest of the cast into supporting roles. Still, many of the show’s best episodes feature Elyse Keaton, whether she was dragging Alex home from an alcohol-fueled party (season 2’s “Birthday Boy”) or going on a blackjack binge in Atlantic City (season 3’s “The Gambler”).  

When you factor in all of Meredith Baxter’s post-Comfort TV credits – from a Emmy-nominated performance in A Woman Scorned: The Betty Broderick Story (1992) to more recent appearances on Brothers & Sisters and Cold Case and Glee, it all adds up to time well spent in one’s chosen profession. And by all accounts she’s a pretty nice person too.

Not sure I’ll be watching her on Young and the Restless – even Daisy Duke joining the cast could not turn me into a regular viewer – but it makes me happy to know she’s still somewhere on television.